How to get sustainable food systems? Ingredients can be sustainable, but that’s not the only answer. Higher yield alone isn’t the right answer. Even government isn’t. There is no one solution. Collaboration is what makes it a food system, and collaboration must drive innovation to make the whole more sustainable than the individual players and their contributions could. As DuPont plays a part in most steps of the agriculture and food chain, we’re particularly committed to this collaboration. Today is World Food Day, and it is “an opportunity to help bring about the future we want.” To get there together, it’s important to lay out what a sustainable food system is, and what it is not.

As the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) says, a food system is made up of the environment, people, institutions, and processes, and it’s what it takes to get food to all of us. And with the global population growing as it is, the systems we use to produce, process, and bring agricultural products to consumers simply must be sustainable.

One common tendency is to think that the answer is local food—shopping close to home, going to a small market. Local systems can sometimes be efficient, but it is not only about eating within a certain radius. Sustainability needs efficiency, and efficiency is really about getting the most out of what you put in. With a global hunger problem, local systems are just one part of the interconnected efforts needed to make sure we can continue producing nutritious food for the future.

For a global system, the collaboration must be global. It’s the way we solve challenges that needs to be rooted in the local reality. For an example, let’s look to Nigeria. By 2050, Nigeria’s population is expected to surpass that of the United States, and feeding this growing population is a huge concern. Cassava, the tuber of one of the most drought-tolerant crops, is a local staple. Promoting use of cassava is a priority for the Nigerian government. Nigerians grow cassava—more than any other country in the world—yet they import more wheat from the US than any other country to make bread. At DuPont, our South African colleagues made it possible to replace some of that wheat with cassava in bread. Their work not only allows for high-quality baked goods, but can increase the income of cassava producers allowing them to afford nutritious diets.

The technical solution from South Africa reinforces the need for global efforts that support local systems, but that technical solution itself only enables better bread made from cassava. Healthy people need a healthy food system, not just an isolated technical solution. They need the scientists to apply the solution, plus they need the collaboration of the people who grow cassava. They need institutions that promote healthy diets, including the cassava. They need consumers to demand healthier dietary choices.

The same goes for Ethiopia. By switching from open-pollinated maize to hybrid seed and using improved farming inputs and techniques, we know that farmers can increase their yields by as much as 50%. But they will not benefit from the full increase if they are disconnected from the other parts of the system. That’s why we collaborated with the government and USAID to implement a program where new warehousing facilities will be built to store seed so farmers can wait for the best market price. This also reduces post-harvest losses of the grain by as much as 20%. To meet the increasing demand for our hybrids, DuPont also opened a seed processing plant and warehouse nearby. We also worked with the Ministry of Agriculture and extension offices to provide the training needed to support farmers. None of the parts—higher yield, a high-tech plant, higher incomes—make as much of a difference unless they work as a system.

It’s also a tendency to use ‘organic’ to connote sustainable, but that’s not necessarily the case. An estimated 40-60% of global crops would be lost to insects or weeds without crop protection products—representing a huge waste of the resources used to grow them. In Europe, we were able to work with major food producers to use DuPont™ Evalio® AgroSystems to monitor pests, optimize spray timings, choose the most appropriate crop protection and minimize unnecessary applications. An independent trial looked at tomato production in the Italian province of Foggia, which produces 1.6 million tons of tomatoes a year. Where DuPont™ Evalio® was used, fruit damage caused by insect pests was reduced from 5.7% to 1% and, on average, one fewer spray application was made. This happens because of a system that depends not only on the data, but on the collaboration between DuPont, major food producers, the growers, and end consumers who are looking for more sustainable products on the shelves.

Speaking of consumers, I mentioned ingredients. DuPont is very involved in soy proteins. Without a doubt, soy is a protein source that has the potential to be truly sustainable, and maximizing soy worldwide can boost nutrition while preserving natural resources. For every kcal of energy used to produce soy, soy generates 415kcals—compared to 20.6 for milk and 3.7 for pork. Growing a ton of soybeans requires about 9,500 liters of water, versus 17,000 for chicken and 78,500 for beef. This is one very sustainable choice, but still not the only answer.

These are just a few examples that show what is possible, and we are optimistic that food can be even more sustainable. Science has a major role to play. But the next step has to be collaboration, and at DuPont we’re dedicated to helping bring about a more collaborative food system. To bring the right people around the table, we sponsored the Global Food Security Index, developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which analyzes the drivers of food security. By facilitating a common language for discussion, we can determine what a sustainable food system is not and start collaborating to build one that is.

-- Gert Keiner, Food Industry Segment Leader Europe, Middle East, and Africa